Australian Greens climate change spokesperson, Senator Christine Milne, today called on the Rudd Government to move decisively at home to begin cutting emissions and not take the equivocating Bali path which helped water down agreement. A first strong and sensible step would be to adopt the Greens energy efficiency policy, EASI.

Senator Milne, who attended the Bali climate conference in her capacity as Vice President of the World Conservation Union, said "Let's not pretend that Bali was a great success. It is a roadmap without a destination, and with science relegated to a footnote.

"In the cold, hard light of day, we have to acknowledge that the choice was between no agreement and an agreement to simply keep talking. Whilst an agreement to keep talking is clearly the better option, it fails to give real hope that our current crop of leaders have what it takes to achieve the dramatic turnaround in emissions we need in the coming decade.

"A government that begins in office with a political excuse not to join near global consensus on a negotiating range, because they are "Waiting for Garnaut", is not a government which gives Australians reason to believe their climate concerns are being taken seriously.

"The re-writing of history to claim that Australians gave Rudd a mandate to "wait for Garnaut" is nonsense. Most Australians have never heard of Garnaut, but they clearly rejected Mr Howard's 'climate realism' and want more than 'climate caution' from Mr Rudd.

"Australia's role in Bali, far from being covered in glory, was as chair of the 'Umbrella Group' of climate laggards, including the USA, Canada and Japan, and as co-chair of the discussion group convened to give the USA a place in which to make its views heard. The compromise Australia helped broker was to remove the science and the science-based emissions reduction targets from the text of any agreement and relegate them to a footnote.

"Thanks to the efforts of Rudd, Wong and others, the US got almost everything it wanted out of Bali. You only have to look at the agreement to see that, far from having been dragged to the table, the US are the big winners. They held the world to ransom and won.

"Now attention must be turned to the domestic front, where the new government must prove it is serious by taking action appropriate to the challenge. The basic test will be whether Australia's emissions have peaked by the next election or are still growing.

"A first, easy step would be to focus on the fastest, cheapest way of reducing emissions – energy efficiency – and to adopt the Greens' EASI policy, to retrofit all 7.4 million homes in Australia with efficiency measures. Most Australians will welcome that far more than the irresponsible tax cuts that the Greens, and now Access Economics, told Prime Minister Rudd to drop."